iRoll smartphone concept swaps practicality for looks

OLED, the screen technology that can offer up super-thin displays, will eventually lead to some madcap gadgets, gizmos and entertainment doo-hickeys that we haven't even thought up yet. And it's certainly exciting young tech designers around the globe.

No more so than Indian designer Sudhanwa Chavan who has used an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) touchscreen as part of his rolled-up smartphone concept - focusing on its potential to be paper thin and flexible.

iRoll, as he calls it, is his conceptual smartphone that comes in scroll form. It simply rolls up into a tube not much bigger than a pen when not in use. It takes up less room in a pocket or handbag than a conventional handset, and its exterior features an "intellectual surface" that can change colour to indicate things such as battery life.

All good so far.

However, as he's made a giant leap of faith as to the availability of future tech such as the never-degrading, bendable OLED screen and a 360-degree rotating camera working on a ratchet mechanism, it's possibly shortsighted that he also mentions that it will work on a 3G network and act as a USB flash drive. We don't need a crystal ball to know that 4G is around the corner (in the UK) and very very real, and that USB is merely a stop gap for digitised memory air - flash memory that exists in the collation of minute, charged air particles.

Er... Maybe we'd be best to leave it to Chavan after all.

What do you think the smartphone of the future will look like? Let us know in the comments below...

Our senior ed of news and features has been a tech and games journalist for more than 27 years, and has been with Pocket-lint for over five. Rik has edited a number of videogame magazines in the past, was deputy editor of Home Cinema Choice, and his TV career included stints as co-presenter of Channel 4's Gamesmaster and Sky One’s Games World.